Is There A Natural Cure For Your Allergy Asthma?

Have you ever got tired of taking your Asthma meds and wondered if there was a natural cure for your asthma? I sure have! Not that I was ungrateful for the relief my asthma tablets and inhaler gave me. But I dislike taking pharmaceuticals – it’s just the way I was brought up I guess.

So I started to look for a natural way of helping my breathing because medical opinion was that I would grow out of asthma and in my case, medical opinion was wrong!

My first port of call was to visit someone I knew who was a Homeopathic Doctor and I went through a lengthy diagnostic session with him and had homeopathic tablets prescribed. This did not help me at all. I persisted and went to consult him over several months to no effect. I don’t give up easily but this was not working.

Time to change strategies then!

I started to explore Natural treatments and in particular Nutritional Therapy and Nutritional Supplements and this is what I found.

Natural Treatments for Asthma

I noticed that many of the vitamins are “anti-inflammatory” so that gave me some hope that they would be useful in controlling asthma. After all, if a problem is due to inflammation then a solution might well be anti-inflammation!

In particular, if a problem is due to too much histamine then a solution might well be something that acted as an anti histamine to reduce the level of histamine in the blood stream..

Sounds good – but what could do this? What natural supplement or vitamin acted as an anti-histamine?

I found the answer in a book written on anti-aging medicine! It was written by a world class scientific researcher Dr. Linus Pauling.

Asthma can be triggered by a multitude of causes. Not all asthma is allergic asthma, it could be “Exercise induced” asthma or “work related” asthma but in my case I was suffering from allergic asthma otherwise called bronchial allergy.

Asthma is an inflammatory disorder which results in high levels of histamine in the bloodstream and a narrowing of the airways which in turn makes it difficult to breathe.

So how could Nutritional supplements help with my asthma symptoms?

Dr. Pauling has written several books and I came across a major clue in one called, “How To Live Longer and Feel Better“.   I think that I bought the book as soon as I saw it in the bookshop, without even looking inside it!

This book has been an important influence on me and I will do a proper review on another page of this website (soon!) but for now let’s jump to the chapter we want to know about, it’s chapter 21 in my edition of the book and it’s called “Allergies”

I’ll give you a summary of the guts of the “Allergies” chapter:

Dr. Pauling writes… “Dr. Clemetson has carried out an important study of the relation between vitamin C and histamine in the blood of 400 men and women in New York.”

The picture here shows the graph I got when I took the data found by Dr. Clemetson and popped it into a spreadsheet.

As you take more Vitamin C your histamine goes down

A little later Pauling continues, “Clemetson (1980) also compared histamine and vitamin C levels in 223 pregnant women and a number of nonpregnant women…”

The 2 graphs look the same and here below are the results shown in a graph from the second study

Vitamin C and Histamine in 2 groups of women

What Does All This Mean for My Asthma?

What we have here are 2 world renowned scientific researchers giving solid scientific data showing that when the amount of vitamin C in your blood gets too low your histamine level rises and when your vitamin C level rises your histamine level goes down.

In a nutshell – to control your histamine just control your vitamin C. And in a smaller nutshell – fight your high histamine by taking a proper dose of vitamin C.

And this has wide health implications but let’s stick to allergic asthma for now.
The results show that to control your asthma one of the factors is your level of vitamin C so the question now is how much vitamin C should you take?

Let’s go back to the scientific data and read what Dr. Clemetson tells us, and let me remind you that the scientific name for vitamin C is ascorbic acid…

“It would seem that ascorbic acid deficiency is one of the most common causes for an elevated blood histamine level, as all 11 of the volunteers given 1 g of ascorbic acid daily for 3 days showed a reduction of blood histamine”

So in a small sample of the original 400 people, this little study on 11 volunteers shows us that even a low dose of vitamin C like 1 gram – about one quarter of a teaspoon of powdered vitamin C will reduce histamine.

That might be a dose to try then?

Is Vitamin C a Natural Cure For Asthma?

That might be a bit too optimistic!

Vitamin C looks like a good way to help control histamine which is a major driver of allergic asthma  but there may be other pieces of the puzzle in your case that are not affected by vitamin C.

You need to learn a bit more about how to use Vitamin C and how to get the best out of it.

You may find the book “Dramatic Asthma Relief” helpful. I bought it a few years ago when I was researching an Allergy website I was working on. I found the book helpful, well written and based on the kind of science we’ve looked at here.

I’d recommend that you check it out and see what you think.

Vitamin C is the biggest part of the solution that I have come across but what else is there to cure or relieve the symptoms of Allergic Asthma?

Here are some action steps you can take:

•    Vitamin C at the right dosage
•    Other special anti-inflammatories to work with Vitamin C
•    A Healthy Diet to provide a good range of nutrients your body needs.
•    Allergen avoidance when you can
•    Stress reduction and coping strategies.

Added to this, it’s a good idea to talk this over with a sympathetic nutritionally  aware Doctor or specialist to get your particular requirements sorted out.

Think on this quote from Encyclopaedia of Natural Medicine by Murray and Pizzorno, 267, ” From a clinical perspective, it appears that asthmatics, have a higher need for vitamin C “, and that may help you to sort out the dose of vitamin C you need.

I believe in knowing about your asthma and allergy and I’d recommend that you chase up information on this Vitamin C and histamine connection up to get more info

•    How to Live Longer And Feel Better by Linus Pauling
•    ”Dramatic Asthma Relief”,  by Susan Millar
•    Dr. Clematson’s research paper mentioned above – automatic download of PDF version

Vitamin C at Amazon – easiest to take is a powder, you just pop a half a teaspoon in a glass of water or juice. Here is one you might like.. This is great for folks who don’t like swallowing pills.

Nice for kids too – check the label for dosage because kids need lower doses at younger ages. Or look for a children’s vitamin C such as this one ==>

One advantage here is that the remedy is a liquid which makes it easy to take and get the right dose too.

Read labels folks – you don’t want a whole bunch of chemicals along with your natural remedy!

All The Best

Alex

Feedback – please let me know how you relate to this; is there any other info I can supply that could help you?